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What we must learn from India: People Power, Land Reform and the Origins of Tree Hugging
by Open-Publishing - Monday 29 October 20071 comment
http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/1171
A true democracy can only be identified when the citizens of a Nation join together to affects the laws under which they are governed. India, the most populous democracy in the world, has in its brief history repeatedly shown us how the poorest of the poor can join together and become a force to be reckoned with.
The latest lesson that we have been taught is how to achieve changes in property laws to protect the impoverished. “An estimated 25,000 people from across India gathered in New Delhi after marching 600 kilometres (370 miles) from the central city of Gwalior to demand land reforms… The protestors had demanded that the government introduce iron-clad legislation on holdings, deeds and tenancy rights - replacing the current system where ownership can easily be taken by the rich and powerful.”
In a country with a population of 1.1 billion, 25,000 people marching together have been able to force the government to promise to pass legislation to protect farmers. How is it then that tens of thousands of people marching in the United States, with a population of only 303 million, have failed to stop their government from funding a war of aggression? Which country would an outside observer recognize as a true democracy?
This democratic model that we have seen glimpses of throughout modern history has not been restricted to India, even though they have been the champions of it. Since the year 2000, Bolivians has fought two water wars in which the victors have again been the people and the losers the multimillion dollar foreign investors. If only the citizens of Western countries were as brave as those of India and Bolivia, maybe then we would be able to see an end to war and the beginning of a true democracy.
But there is a bright side for those desperate to see a change in the western corporate mentality. We have been learning from what our global neighbours have been showing us. Tree Hugging is a perfect example. “The movement began in Chamoli district in 1973” and has over the years become one of the most recognized non-violent forms of protest to protect the environment throughout the world. So there is still hope for us Westerners, even though we are slow learners we do learn as long as we have good examples to show us the way.
To help expedite our education and motivate us into action consider watching the following “inspirational half-hour documentary about environmental activism and tree-hugging featuring Sunderlal Bahuguna, Pandurang Hegde and Vandana Shiva”. It gives us hope by showing us how much power we actually have. Appiko- to embrace (29:35)
http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/1171
chycho
Forum posts
30 October 2007, 17:05
A very good question to ask is how many lobbyists directly influence India’s Congress?
The problem we have here in the US is that we have an extra-Constitutional legislative system, called lobbyists who are allowed to indirectly buy political influence. The vast majority of these lobbyists work for the world’s largest multi-nationals and conglomerates, the oil industry, Big Pharma and the telecom industry to name a few.
In the US the world’s largest corporations have far more influence on legislation than do the common American people or any other influential special interest group, for that matter. This is the real reason why the rest of the industrialized world offer so much more to their middle classes, i.e. universal health care, cheap post secondary education, more holidays, more vacation days, better retirement pensions, the list is endless, since their respective legislators are not burdened or corrupted by an army of corporate lobbyists.
The rest of the industrialized nations of the world are indeed influenced by the multinationals, but not to the exclusion of their common people’s interests. The main reason is that without lobbyists the easy, incestuous corruption between a nation’s legislators and its most powerful multinationals, which is the norm in our country, would be very difficult to carry out.
I find that our First Amendment rights are heavily exploited by the richest and the most powerful corporations and banks, almost to the point where they believe that it gives them the right to lie and manipulate whomever they please, in order for more legislation in their favor to be passed.
It is unfortunate that our courts also find that the First Amendment is more about commercial free expression as opposed to non-commercial free expression.
But that is to be expected, since our courts are filled with judges who come from the same political class, the same system of lobbyists, as virtually all of our legislators.